Unwritten Rules

by KD Casey

  “Any friend I know?”

  And he could have lied and said he was going to the beach with guys on the team, or could have said Eugenio, though that would invite more questions, especially when his mother asked if Eugenio tried cooking from the cookbook she loaned him.

  “Nah, just some folks in Oakland,” he said, and then changed the subject, hoping she wouldn’t press the point.

  Now, it’s just the two of them in the for-once-merciful traffic, Eugenio driving, Zach resting against the window. They make decent time, enough to get there when the beach house is in full midafternoon splendor. It’s one of those big West Coast houses, the kind that seem impossible anywhere but California: three bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, including a little tucked-away stall for hosing sand off their feet. An enormous living room and palatial kitchen. The kind of house that should be filled with other people but isn’t, just the two of them and a strip of offseason California beach.

  Eugenio goads him into taking a shower, even though Zach just wants to collapse on the massive bed in the largest bedroom, everything in the house spread out from itself like it knows he needs the space. Eugenio goads him and then follows him in, water beading on his eyelashes and down his chest, standing close while Zach steams the exhaustion from his pores.

  They collapse in bed, sleep until the light outside is fading, Eugenio getting up like he’s leaving to go grab food at the store and then Zach cajoling him into staying, into letting Zach touch his chest, his hips, all the places he knows by feel.

  “Let’s just order something,” Zach says. “Stay here. For the next few days. Or weeks.”

  “Sounds ambitious.” Eugenio pulls up the reviews for half a dozen places that do delivery, reading Zach potential menu items while he’s sitting, naked, orange light from the setting sun tracing shapes on his shoulders and chest, and illuminating the dark lines of his tattoos.

  “Are you going to get one for this season?” Zach runs his fingers over the tattoo at Eugenio’s ribs, feeling the feathered vibration of his laughter.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. You got any suggestions?”

  “You’d just let me pick something?” Zach presses his mouth to the edge of one, and he expected the skin to feel different, to taste different, somehow, when he first kissed Eugenio there, in the rented bed of his Arizona apartment, the desert night pouring in the window. “How about a plant?”

  “A plant?”

  “Just—” and Zach’s long since cooled from the shower, but his face feels hot “—I mean, you can’t get something for us, but I’d know it was there.”

  Eugenio puts his phone on the bedside table. He brackets Zach’s face with his hands, kissing him and interposing a thigh between his. Zach explores the muscles of Eugenio’s sides, the oblique he strained and didn’t tell the trainers about. He tries to imagine something written there, permanent, declarative, announcing to the world who they are to each other.

  “Any particular kind of plant?” Eugenio asks later, when Zach’s resting with his ear against Eugenio’s chest.

  “I don’t really know anything about tattoo designs. My parents wouldn’t be happy if I got one.”

  “You worry about what they’ll think.”

  “I mean, yeah.”

  “You ever think they should meet you halfway?”

  “It doesn’t really work like that,” Zach says. “Besides, what did your parents think of these?” He taps one of Eugenio’s tattoos with his index finger.

  “Mine weren’t that happy about them, until they saw I wasn’t gonna get, I don’t know, something horrifically tacky.”

  And Zach thinks about the one Giordano has on his hip, which manages to combine praying hands and a Bible verse, and the one on his forearm that’s a semicolon, neither of which Zach has asked about.

  “You can come and help me pick it out,” Eugenio says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Only if you don’t make fun of me for having to get up every few minutes. They hurt closer to the bone.”

  They eat that night out on the deck, the ocean rolling in the distance. Eugenio talks about all the wineries nearby, about where he wants to go hiking or rent bikes.

  “You gonna let me have some vacation on this vacation?” Zach asks. Their house is set back from the others on the block, the deck arranged so that they can’t be seen from either side. And Zach kisses him, tasting the bourbon Eugenio’s drinking.

  “Eventually you’ll get bored of lying around in bed.”

  “You know, I don’t think I will.” Because the offseason never feels long enough, even if Zach wished it was shorter, their season extended on a deeper playoff run. Eventually, he’ll have to call his agent to discuss how much he’ll argue for in arbitration, though the team has made it clear they see him as expendable. Something that chills him now: that they’ll likely offer him less than he’s currently making and that he’ll say yes to whatever they do in order to stay.

  Next to him Eugenio drinks his bourbon.

  “We could get started on that,” Zach says.

  Eugenio raises an eyebrow in question.

  “I meant, lying around in bed.”

  And Eugenio drains his glass before offering Zach a hand up.

  They go to bed early, sleep in, the morning sun waking Eugenio, who grumbles and shuts the shades and sleeps for another hour while Zach goes and makes coffee. They don’t do anything more ambitious than swim for the first few days, Zach chattering in the cold California surf until Eugenio tells him to suck it up and buy a wetsuit, though he mostly reads on the beach.

  “I thought you liked swimming,” Zach says.

  “I like my balls outside my body.” And he laughs when Zach just says, “Same.”

  There are tidepools by the beach, a rocky inlet they navigate together, cloistered from the world by the U-shaped coastline. Eugenio spends time trying to get pictures of them, the pulsing anemones and rapacious starfish. He sends them to Gordon, whose daughter apparently wants to be a marine biologist.

  “Where did you tell him you were?” Zach asks.

  “At the beach with you.”

  “Has he said anything about us?”

  “He saw me once, coming out of your hotel room.” And Zach’s hands start to sweat, his pulse hammering like the waves against the shoreline, until Eugenio adds, “He said it was good for us to plan together. You know, in terms of handling pitchers.”

  “Oh, I mean, that’s good.”

  “I learned a lot this year. Stuff the other team didn’t know how to teach me and that I couldn’t have learned otherwise.”

  “Even if it didn’t turn out how we wanted.” Especially in their final game against the Union, one that ended in crushing defeat.

  “I mean—” Eugenio glances up and down the stretch of beach, which is deserted this late in the afternoon, this far into October. “Who says it didn’t?”

  Zach slides his hand from Eugenio’s elbow to his forearm to his wrist, thumb brushing over his knuckles, then winds their fingers together. And kisses him, standing there, in the salt spray of the ocean, their feet finding solid purchase on the rocks. It’s the kind of kiss without particular urgency or hesitancy, Zach’s hands against the broad muscles of Eugenio’s back, on the blank stretch of skin at his ribs, a space waiting for Zach to fill it in.

  “I love you,” Eugenio says, pulling back. “I’ve been waiting to say it.”

  Eugenio’s hair is long enough that it’s windblown. His face is bright from being out in the sun. There’s an entire ocean behind him, one Zach can’t see right now, Eugenio occupying his field of view, the world for once held at a distance.

  Zach breathes, the kind of controlled breathing that fills his chest and torso. He closes his eyes, noticing the rocks slippery under his feet, the wind off the surf, the tu-tu-tu call of the water birds. List
ens to the ocean shaping the shore, carving out living spaces in the once-solid coastline. Listens and feels his breath, and when he opens his eyes, Eugenio is looking at him.

  “I love you too,” Zach says. “I was trying to make sure I remember how I feel just now.”

  Eugenio holds up his phone, pressing against Zach, arm around Zach’s shoulders, face against his neck. They’re unmistakable in the pictures, who they are and who they are to each other, Eugenio kissing his cheek, then the side of his nose, then his mouth, a series of images preserved on his camera.

  They walk back to the beach house, Eugenio’s arm brushing against his, a kind of silence like the world is contained in a soap bubble, one that could be burst by talking about baseball or dinner or their plans for the next day. They determine, by mutual agreement, to bypass the living room, the kitchen, to make their way to the broad bed they’ve been sharing, to lie there with one another, curtains open to the fading late-afternoon light.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  July, Present Day

  The first game back after the All-Star break has the feeling of coming back to school after winter vacation: everyone’s a little heavier and forgets what exactly it is they’re doing there.

  After playing in Cincinnati, Swordfish Park seems particularly enormous, a huge cavern of a place with a staring concrete roof and a handful of fans. Their reactions, which are mostly collective groans, echo off it. They held a concert there over break; the already-patchy outfield still bears scars of where the stage was set up.

  It’s mid-game, and Womack is on the mound. He’s one of their more experienced pitchers, if having three years of big-league service time makes anybody experienced. But by the fourth inning, his sinking fastball isn’t fooling the Arches’ lineup. They’ve loaded the bases with three blooper singles, each spinning past the Swordfish second baseman into the wide plains of Miami’s infinite outfield.

  Zach calls time, tipping up his mask and jogging out to the mound.

  “Save it,” Womack says, when he gets there. “I do not need Zach Glasser therapy right now.”

  Womack’s a few inches taller than Zach is, Black, skinny enough to be swallowed by the bright teal of their home jerseys. He has a complex windup that reminds Zach a little of a pinwheel but when he’s locked in, he’s locked in. Right now he mostly looks sweaty and pissed off. He moves the glove from his mouth so Zach can see him talk, revealing a scowl. They’re facing one another, Zach’s mitt up shielding them on one side, and Womack’s glove on the other, a concession to the runners occupying the bases, who are also apt to steal signs and relay them to their team’s batter.

  “No therapy, I swear,” Zach lies. “I was gonna say we should maybe go heavier on the sliders.”

  Womack gives him a look like he doesn’t believe Zach either. “Sliders. Sure, Glasser, let’s throw some sliders.”

  Zach doesn’t leave right away, instead waiting for the umpires to start inching closer like they’re gonna come to break up their confab.

  “You gonna get the hell off my mound?” Womack says finally.

  And Zach conceals his grin behind his mask, jogging back behind home plate, and throwing the set of signs to indicate a slider.

  They end up losing the game, one where Zach strikes out, lines out, flies out, and pops out, four frustratingly quick at-bats that seem over before they’ve begun. He has to answer for the team’s anemic showing when the beat reporter for the Herald sticks his phone in Zach’s face and asks about it. “Sometimes stuff goes your way,” Zach says, “and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s baseball.”

  “Thanks,” Womack says, after the reporters have dispersed.

  “You mean for not selling you out to the press?”

  “My sinker wasn’t working.”

  “Shit happens.” Zach’s legs hurt, the roof not fully insulating them from the heat. His knees have started making noises when he first gets up in the morning. He mostly just wants to dunk himself in the hot tub and go home. “It’s probably just rust from the break. I should get going.”

  “Nah, I threw almost every day over break. Ball just felt weird coming out of my hand.”

  “What’d Pinelli say?” Zach says. Though Womack spent most of the game at the other end of the dugout from their pitching coach, talking over pitch selection with Zach.

  “Said it was probably rust from the break. But I mean—” Womack glances around at their teammates, most of whom are already changed and heading out “—it’d be cool if you could do some work with me during my next throwing session.”

  “Maybe you should ask Pinelli.” Because it would mean additional work on top of trying to coax three good pitches out of pitchers who can only really throw two.

  “You know when you’re in school and the teacher figures out early on you don’t need as much help as the rest of the knuckleheads in your class. And so she leaves you alone, even when you need something?”

  “I was one of the knuckleheads, but I’ll take your word for it.” Zach suppresses a sigh. “All right. Let me know when.”

  Zach goes home, marking the day off on his printed-out calendar, a slash line through it. He watches a TV show that he doesn’t really pay attention to before flipping to a cooking show that he also mostly ignores. He hurts, his body registering all its small indignities as he settles into bed, aches that no longer respond to heat or ice or their massage therapist. He looks for his Tiger Balm, but remembers he finished his last tin before the break and hasn’t gotten around to getting more. He digs an ancient tub of Vicks out of his medicine cabinet and spends a few minutes rubbing some on the meat of his hip where a knot has coalesced and won’t release.

  When he first moved to Miami, he spent most of his time getting to know the new team. They’re rebuilding and are made of the kinds of players common on rebuilding teams: a parade of rookies promoted too young from the minors, most of whom were quickly demoted once it became clear they couldn’t cut it against big-league pitching. And players like him, ones aging out of the game or still clinging to its fringes. He got to know the city some, even going to synagogue a few times, mostly to appease his parents’ insistence that he couldn’t meet someone “nice” sitting around his apartment. Made a list of restaurants and went to them, sometimes with teammates, sometimes with their coaching staff or trainers, the kind of meals where he just ordered the first thing on the menu, absent the rituals of Eugenio’s explanations.

  Dated, or rather, fucked, hookups that rarely lasted longer than the offer of a shower or a glass of water. And he worried that they might recognize him, until he realized that even the most die-hard Swordfish fans—all three of them—probably couldn’t. Something he probably wouldn’t have the luxury of if he moved back to Baltimore or someplace else more baseball-oriented.

  The Vicks helps, though now he smells like a cough drop when he gets in bed. He’s drifting to sleep when he gets a notification on his phone from a guy he sometimes hooks up with, responding to a text he sent before the All-Star Classic, seeing if he was around that week.

  Sorry I was out of town, it reads. You up now? There’s a picture accompanying it. Zach clears both it and the text message in case one of his teammates decides to snoop on his phone.

  He opens up the thread with Eugenio and stares at it as if willing it to change, for ellipses to appear, indicating that Eugenio is typing. But nothing happens.

  His hookup texts again, a teasing message telling Zach not to leave him on Read, and Zach says, Not a great time, and doesn’t respond any further.

  A few days later, Zach heads out to the bullpen for Womack’s throwing session. It’s a Monday, a fact he only knows because he marked off Saturday and Sunday on the calendar. A humid Miami morning, the kind that feels even more airless in the stadium, its roof already drawn in anticipation of afternoon rain.

  Womack’s there warming up. He uses a modified windup, a
small leg kick preceding the impossibly long stride of his legs.

  “How’s your elbow?” Zach asks. Though most pitchers have the same aversion to the words elbow discomfort that middle schoolers have to saying Bloody Mary in front of a bathroom mirror, lest it should appear.

  “Elbow’s good,” Womack says. He adds, “No, really,” in response to Zach’s look of skepticism. “I’d say something if it wasn’t. Maybe not to Pinelli, but I’d let you know.”

  Zach clips on his gear and goes and squats sixty feet away from Womack, who throws a few warmup tosses before saying he wants to start with sinkers.

  His sinker isn’t a particularly fast fastball—it sits in the low nineties but has a heavy sink action like rolling a bowling ball off a flat roof. The kind of pitch Zach never really has to frame. The kind of pitch that makes him wonder what he’s doing on the team at all, since the coaches tell him what to call for and he only sometimes has to steal strikes.

  “Looks fine to me,” Zach says, after he catches a few with placements around the bottom of the would-be zone. “But if it’s bugging you, let’s see what the Rapsodo has to say.”

  The Rapsodo sits on one of the tables. It resembles an old flash-powder camera, a lens poking out of its casing capturing pitch data. A tablet lies next to it displaying the kind of numbers that used to stymie Zach until Eugenio explained them. Some of which indicate that Womack was right: his sinker is behaving differently than it was before the break.

  “You having shoulder pain or anything that’d change your arm slot?” Zach asks.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Next set, maybe think about your arm position. Like don’t even change it, just, I don’t know, think about it.”

  “Put some intention into it? You sound like my yoga instructor.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  By the end of their throwing session, Womack’s joking with Zach, telling him about what he did over break—which involved an ill-fated trip to a paint-your-own-pottery place with his girlfriend—and about their upcoming series against the Pittsburgh Rivers.